John Wong Presents Fluid Biomed at LSI USA ‘23

Transcription

John Wong  0:05  

Thanks, everyone. Thank you for coming to hear me share the story of Fluid Biomed. We are developing the world's first polymer stent to cure brain aneurysms. We are an early stage VC backed medical device startup, launching our first in human clinical trial and a $10 million Series A round. So, the founders are the inventors of the technology as well as medical experts in the domain. Again, my name is John Wong, I'm co founder and CEO of Fluid Biomed. I'm a neurosurgeon and a practicing neurosurgeon in Canada, Calgary, Canada, I trained in in Canada as well at Yale University, and I completed my MBA at Wharton. My co founder is Dr. Lee Metha. He's President and CTO besides also being a neurosurgeon, perhaps more importantly, he's a biomedical engineer having trained at Harvard. And it's this technology, this this, this science that we developed together in the laboratory, that we're spinning out towards commercialization, you can see a bunch of logos on the bottom. We've been in a number of accelerators. Most recently, medtech innovator in California, program run by Paul Grand. So the unmet clinical and market need here is that of a brain aneurysm. A brain aneurysm is a bubble on a blood vessel, it's a weakness that can burst and cause a potentially devastating stroke. I see patients like this all the time because again, we we run a very busy practice focused on on on treating people with this terrible disease. Brain aneurysms affect up to one in 20 people. So if this conference had 2000 People 40 to 50% of us actually were walking around with a brain aneurysm we don't know about bringing it rare brain aneurysms are pretty common. In fact, President Biden had two aneurysms, treated as well as Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones, so both younger and older people. Unfortunately, if your aneurysm bursts, it's fatal and about a third of people and in many patients need repeated procedures. And with with a prevalence of about four to 5%. That's a huge total addressable market and the brain aneurysm device market currently already sits at a billion dollars likely to double in the next five to 10 years. I also want to differentiate our technology aneurysms are now treated with the stents and that's our product a stent. But brain stent are very different from the more common stent, the heart stent or cardiac stent, a cardiac stent has been around for decades, it's almost now a commodity. A bare metal stent retails for about 400 to $500. That's not the case with the neurovascular stent, neurovascular stents highly specialized niche market, you might say, but each stent retails for over $12,000 plus. So again, a very high margin product that really attracts the attention of the major medical device manufacturers. So perhaps in next three seconds here, I'm going to explain brain surgery to you how do we treat a brain aneurysm? Well, conventional aneurysm treatment now is basically using devices that go from the inside of the blood vessel. And on the left there you see coiling coiling is where we deliver a tiny micro catheter and a micro wire into the bubble into the into the aneurysm and then release coils to plug up the aneurysm from the inside. What's the newer kid on the block is a stent, a flow diverting stent. That's what you see on the right side, a high density mesh stent, we don't need to go into the weakness we put into the normal blood vessel, and it diverts blood flow to the normal blood vessels of the brain. So stents are faster, the more cost effective and they use less radiation. And these are all really positive things. So stents have really revolutionized how we treat patients. But there are problems with existing stents. They're all they're made out of pure metal. And why is that important? Well, what's less well known what's what's less well advertised that after you put in a stent, aneurysms persist, they're still alive in 25 to 40% of patients. And this is a problem because after you put in a stent, you can't remove it. From a physician standpoint, this leaves very few choices for the patient after stent with stent failure. And from a payer standpoint, these repeated procedures that are necessary lead to higher costs of the system and, and risk to the patient. So what is our company done, we've addressed all these issues with resolve this is a very unique polymer based stent technology. And this is a highly magnified view of our of our stent. It's a very fine stent. Each one of those strands there is about a human hair in thickness. So it's a marvel of engineering. And what we've created is basically a polymer based stent that's buttress by some metal to provide a radial force and visibility on X rays. So again, resolve is a world's first polymer based brain stent and and what we're addressing here is again, the market of a brain aneurysm you can see in the cartoon there are a bubble the weakness and what doctors like myself and my co founder do nowadays on a routine basis is access blood vessels through the through the under X-rays, and then we position tiny micro catheters and micro wires into the blood vessels of the brain under X ray. This is done as an inpatient procedure. After our position, we then release a stent, a flow, diverting stent again, it diverts blood flow. And the blood will then pass into normal blood vessels of the brain but slows down blood flow inside of the aneurysm, causing it to gently clot off and then heal over time. Now, as opposed to the pure metal, since ours is made out of polymer, so it disappears over time, leaving very little footprint behind. Why is this important? Well, because we're made out of polymer, we're the only polymer based technology compared to all the other metal stent competitors out there, this, the Polymer itself, is is radically different. But it allows for revolutionary versatility for physicians in that now because it's soft, center. So stuff that shapeable we can actually use it to treat many types of aneurysms, not just a few types, as well, this Polymer itself is very compatible with other devices. And remember, before I talked about coiling, versus float versus a stent, we can actually do both with our product overall. So this really provides reassurance to the physician and the patient, that their disease is well treated. Because the polymer is radiolucent, meaning it's invisible and X rays, we can now do non invasive testing as well. And because of polymer disappears over time, there's no need for lifelong blood thinners. We look at our technology is the foundation of a platform. On your on your left there we've actually demonstrated in in our animal models up almost 100 animal models at this point up to three years long term aneurysm cure, and we're very focused on brain disease because we're brain surgeons, but there's no reason why our technology can't be leveraged to other areas of the body. We have a very favorable IP and tech transfer position. We've been issued a broad based patent in Canada. Again, we're based in Canada and Wilson Sonsini is helping us with our claims for the USPTO. The US PTO has issued a patent for our proprietary stent delivery system and also highlight that the IP is wholly controlled by the company where university professors, the university is a minority equity shareholder, but there is no pre existing licensing or royalty obligation. We're small but mighty, we have a diverse and effective team. We have at this point about 10 employees, mostly engineering based, very dedicated and passionate to creating something that's radically different with on a very capital efficient basis. And you can see our advisory board there is is diverse by sector as well as by expertise. This is our pathway of execution where the end of the green now, with our VC background, we are now starting first in human trials. And that's going to be a very exciting prospect for us we are imminent in in actually implanting our product in an X US jurisdiction. And stay tuned for for for information about that. I'll also point out that although although we will need to conduct further pivotal trials, comparable accurate acquisition exits have occurred between 150 to $380 million for comparable technologies acquired by the strategics or pre FDA approval. In terms of our fast past financing, traction, we are VC backed Xiang Bay and Palo Alto is minute medicine innovative and in Miami. And we're again we're launching our Series A round essentially all geared towards conducting our first inhuman and safety human clinical trial. So our unfair advantage advantages were domain experts. I know aneurysms like the back of my hand. I've been in practice for decades at this point. We have a rich network of KOLs that we that we can, that we can work with. My co founders lab is conducts world leading research and bioabsorbable, we have a very favorable tech transfer position. And clinical trials. We were just highlighted in New York Times our university, very complimentary article, but the next phase clinical trials and we're really excited by that prospect. Thank you very much for listening.